


The Right Kind of Life

by GreenKirtle



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Graphic Descriptions of Torture, HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, S&M, bad vanilla sex, broken sadist Bucky/frustrated masochist Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 05:54:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7347793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenKirtle/pseuds/GreenKirtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is increasingly sure that Bucky is either lying about remembering their old relationship or hiding something Hydra did to him.  He's more or less normal until they have sex and then – well, Bucky's very <i>nice</i> to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Right Kind of Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1504.html?thread=2778080#cmt2778080).

What Bucky had said to Steve, right before he looped an arm around his waist and kissed him, was “You don’t have to hold back. I remember this.” It wasn’t until a few weeks later that he started to wonder whether Bucky had been lying.

After years spent chasing ghosts and burnt-out Hydra outposts Steve had had a lot of time to run through scenarios of what kind of state Bucky might be in when they caught up with him. He had read reams of analyses by psychologists talking about permeant neuroanatomy damage and dissociative fugues. Compared to everything Steve had braced himself for, Bucky seemed fine. He had a mistrustful streak that was new – he wouldn’t stick to a cell phone for more than a few weeks, he only grudgingly got a bank account and still refused to use a credit card – and he could get twitchy sometimes, but who the hell wouldn’t? It wasn’t like Steve could pretend that he didn’t scan for exits every time he walked into a room. Bucky’s memory didn’t seem to be any better or worse than his, either. The longer it went on the more convinced Steve was that something had happened to Bucky, because he was normal until they got into bed and then he was – well, he was very nice.

 

When Steve looked back on their first time together after he had gotten Bucky back, after everything had settled back to normal, he realized he should have seen the signs already. It had been electric. Steve felt almost dizzy with how much he wanted it, with how much he could hardly believe they had each other again. They hadn’t even managed to get their clothes all the way off. And still Bucky had wanted to touch him softly, reverently. Steve had come with his hand in Bucky’s hair and an image in his mind of Bucky throwing him down on the bed, of those metal fingers hard on his windpipe. 

Bucky’s studio was small enough that if Steve didn’t watch himself when he came in the door he’d knock into the card table that they ate their meals at. The kitchen was an alcove in the wall with a sink, a mini fridge, and an over-grown hotplate pretending to be a stove. But there were windows on two sides to let the light in, and Bucky himself would say that he didn’t need much room. He had a desk that Steve suspected he never used, a bookshelf, a chest of drawers, a gun safe lurking in one corner, and a sort of pallet that folded up to become a couch and unfolded to become a bed. One time Bucky had outright admitted that he didn’t bother to unfold it when Steve wasn’t around, and the image of him sleeping on the couch with his feet hanging over the side made Steve want to move in with him right then and there. He’d have to get rid of most of his stuff, but that didn’t matter. They could make the bed together every night the way they did now when Steve was over. He could wake up next to Bucky every morning and not feel so damn lonely all the time. And after they made the bed Bucky could belt Steve’s arms behind his back, shove him down onto the hard mattress and have him any way he – Steve shook that fantasy out of his head. 

Bucky looked tired when he let him in, but he stopped Steve for a kiss before he let him set the plastic bags of takeout on the card table.

“Your super-secret mission go okay?”

Bucky shrugged, noncommittal. “We got back this morning. Are you buying me dinner again?”

“I didn’t think you’d have a lot in the cupboards, and it’s one more thing off the list.”

Bucky snorted. “After the line at Shake Shack I’m not sure I trust that list of yours anymore. But you’re right, I probably would have ordered something anyway.”

They sat at the card table, close enough that their elbows knocked together, ate ginger salad and tea salad and coconut noodles and vegetable curry and sticky rice with mango. They didn’t talk about anything important, but over the course of dinner Steve could feel himself relaxing. He looked at Bucky, laughing at something Steve had said as he leaned forward to snag a styrofoam container, and felt a pang as he realized that the times in the last few months when he had felt happiest and most human were like this, the two of them together in this little room.

They were cleaning up when Bucky said, “About that super-secret mission. I’ve been helping Natalia tie up some old threads from her past. She doesn’t want the details spread around and I try to respect that.”

Steve wiped out a plastic container and dropped it into the recycling bin. “I understand.”

Bucky’s shoulders slumped in relief. “I’m glad – I don’t want you to think I’m keeping secrets. And,” he paused, looked Steve up and down with unmistakable heat, “I really have missed you.”

In that instant Steve knew what was coming. Bucky was going to want to lay him down and pet him all over, and Steve was going to lie there feeling uncomfortable and guilty, wishing they could just stop already, because it was never really going to be enough. He was going to get off fantasizing about Bucky pushing a plug into his ass and then taking a belt to him, or shoving Steve into an icy shower and ordering him to get himself ready while Bucky stood outside the spray stroking himself lazily and talking him through it, ordering Steve to bend over and show himself off when he –

He couldn’t do it again.

“Bucky, I need to ask you something.” Maybe it was something in Steve’s tone that made him kick the refrigerator door shut and stand, face serious and attentive, but Steve pressed on before he could get too caught up in it. “You know that I’ve always been here for you, I always will be. That there isn’t anything you could tell me that would make me change my mind. And I would never make you tell me something you wanted to keep private. But I also hope I never made you feel like you had to cover anything up for me. Because sometimes I’ve wondered if something – happened to you, with Hydra.”

“Pal, a lot of things happened to me in seventy years, you know that. You sat in on my debriefs.”

“But there’s some stuff that I would understand if you didn’t want to say it in front of strangers, on tape. If someone ever –” Steve took a breath. “Bucky, do you really remember the way we used to have sex?” _You shoved me around and were rough with me. You didn’t hold back, you knew what I could take and you gave it to me. You called me names for getting off on it and I loved it. We used to play like we were other people, like I didn’t get to say no. One time you pushed me onto my knees and put your sidearm in my mouth and I just opened up and sucked it, and_ that _was one of the memories I would hold onto when I was cold and alone at night._

Bucky’s answer, when it came, was a simple nod.

“I would understand if you didn’t want to do that stuff anymore because someone hurt you or used you or – or raped you. But I wish you could at least tell me because I can’t stand just pretending nothing’s different. It would never change how I feel about you, or – Bucky?”

Bucky was doubled over, one hand gripping the rim of the sink, the other clamped over his mouth. Steve grabbed for the recycling bin, thinking he was about to throw up, but when Bucky took his hand away he drew a shuddering breath and choked out, “You’re just as bad as everyone else. I thought _you’d_ understand! You really think this is about what happened to _me_?”

Steve grabbed for Bucky as his knees caved and they sank to the floor together. He was sobbing into his hands, wretched and desperate, and all Steve could do was put his arms around him and repeat, “Talk to me, Bucky please, it’s okay.”

When Bucky finally pulled back his face and hands were a mess, but he wiped his eyes with his own sleeve before saying furiously, “Everyone’s so sorry for me. For how I suffered. How _I_ suffered?” He broke off with a gasp. “You’re a good person. I thought you’d get it.”

“Bucky, you’re a good person too. Whatever they did to you, it was wrong. You didn’t deserve it.”

“You don’t get it! No one ever did anything like that to me. I was fine! Yeah, they were brutal sometimes but at the end of the night I got stitched up, I got wiped, I healed up and forgot it all. Even after it came back, well, I killed most of the bastards that did this to me. I’m fine. That’s not what keeps me up at night. I didn’t just kill people for Hydra. I tortured people for them. I didn’t ask for a reason. They’d send me in there and I wouldn’t see a human being. I saw a thing that needed to be broken. So that’s what I did. I would look down at them and they were helpless. They would beg me or scream or cry, and I never felt anything. I just hurt them again. I’m fine. The ones that lived probably didn’t do as well as me. And I remember them all. _That’s_ what keeps me up at night.”

“You didn’t mention it in the debriefs,” was all Steve can think to say over the horror coiling inside him. He kept smoothing Bucky’s hair away from his face. The feeling was as comforting to him as he hoped it was to Bucky.

Bucky laughed wetly. “I mentioned it every time I said ‘interrogation.’ I couldn’t talk about that stuff in front of you. I still wanted you to look at me afterwards.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Bucky, you didn’t have a choice.”

“But I still did it! I can break bones with my left hand. Pull out a man’s teeth one by one. They were usually already beaten by the time I came in but I can do that too. I know what to do with jumper cables, with a bucket of water. I can make it last. Sometimes I killed them. Sometimes I got beaten for that, sometimes nobody cared – I still lived. I was still fine. And they brought me in to teach other people how to do it. Eight or ten men at a time. How many of them went out and did it, how many of them showed someone else? There was one woman – we didn’t even want her, we wanted her uncle. She was a new mother. I could tell. They had pulled her shirt off before I came in and there was milk in her breasts. She should have been at home, she should have been safe, not a dirty basement with me and instead I–”

This time when he broke down Steve dragged him close, held Bucky as he sobbed against his shoulder. He had to stay steady. Had to keep his hands moving steadily through Bucky’s hair, up and down his back. Had to keep his breath from shuddering. Had to tamp down his own shock and disgust.

When Bucky spoke again, it was muffled from where his face was still pressed against Steve’s shirt. “Of course I remember the stuff we used to do together. Of course I know it isn’t the same. It was _fun_. I loved you. But it can never be that way again for me, Steve. Because I still love you, and when I think about treating you rough all I can see is you laid out like one of those people. All I can think about is what I did to them and how I felt nothing. The nightmares that wake me up in the middle of the night aren’t about anything that ever happened to me. I see you helpless and – getting hurt. Sometimes I have to watch, sometimes I do it, and sometimes I just find you after. Steve, if anything like that ever happened to you I think I’d go crazy.”

“I’m pretty hard to hurt these days, you know.”

Steve had meant it to make him feel better, but Bucky’s head snapped up and his voice rose to a shout. “No you’re not! You still have a nervous system like any normal person. You still have weak points. The only fucking difference the serum makes is that you can take more before you bleed out or have a seizure or your heart stops. That just makes it worse! A professional could make you scream in twenty minutes. Maybe less if they had jumper cables.” The anger seemed to drain out of him, and he reached out to touch the side of Steve’s face with his right hand. “I wish I didn’t know that. I wish I didn’t think about it every time you’re on a mission, every time you’re in my bed. But this is what I am now. I just want you to be safe.”

When they finally stood up, Steve gently pulled back. “Why don’t you go rinse your face off, I’ll set up the bed, and we can get some sleep.”

He pulled the frame flat and straightened the mattress on it, tucked the comforter neatly at the corners, and was almost done when he found himself standing there twisting a pillow in his hands, staring down at the bed. Bucky would come out of the bathroom and they would lie down together, because Bucky was his oldest friend and the man he loved, and he needed Steve right now. Steve had said there was nothing that could change the way he felt, so he’d damn well better act like he meant it. 

And if in the morning or sometime later Bucky wanted to touch him it would be slow, it would be gentle, because they loved each other. 

Steve reminded himself he had gotten what he wanted. He had gotten the truth. He had told Bucky it would be okay. He had given his word. He could keep going like this. He could.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Coming In From the Cold by the Delgados.
> 
> We can try for the right kind of life  
> I only wish you'd had a chance to decide  
> Have a look around you, there's no one there  
> How can you call this fair?


End file.
